Hi folks. I think I was over thinking this issue so for the benefit of dzinerchic, let me explain what I’ve done. If others would weigh-in on my method and comment on its validity that would help.
First of all, many of my misconceptions and questions were based on a couple of old paradigms. I was thinking of having one wordpress install with some kind of “virtual mapping switch” that needed to take place. Fact is, a URL is a mapping so simply having several installs in their own directory with shortcuts in my browser does the trick. Having unique installs in no biggie. With that, here is my method.
On my PC, Apache is looking for all website info at the following address:
C:\xampp\htdocs This is essentially localhost
A standard WordPress install would create the following path:
C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress
I want several development sites to live there, each being totally separate from one another. Knowing that, I created three sub-folders under htdocs (Site1, Site2, Site3 for example).
Paths then look like this:
C:\xampp\htdocs\site1
C:\xampp\htdocs\site2
C:\xampp\htdocs\site3
I then logged into MYSQL using the XAMPP admin control panel. Once in there, I created three separate databases, each with its one unique prefix for security reasons. Databases and prefixes named something like this:
Site1_db prefix = sa
Site2_db prefix = sb
Site3_db prefix = sc
{the examples here are only examples. In reality, if a site is for Joe’s Cars, I would name the database Joescars and the prefix would be jc_ } I gave unique prefix’s for security so that they are not the standard wp_
Once the databases existed, the WordPress install has something to grab. So I unzip the wordpress downloaded install to each of the folders on my PC – Site1, Site2 and Site3.
In my browser I go to the first one with the following path:
C:\xampp\htdocs\Site1\wordpress\wp-admin\install.php
{apache and mysql running locally using XAMPP}
WordPress walks me thru the install and as Andrea_r says “bob’s yer uncle”
Now in my browser I make shortcuts for the following:
https://localhost/Site1/wordpress/wp-login.php
https://localhost/Site2/wordpress/wp-login.php
https://localhost/Site3/wordpress/wp-login.php
Each mapped shortcut results in a login page. Since each install has it’s own database and the actual site names mirror what will go live when I FTP them up to the various hosts, there should be little cleanup.
Does this methodology help you dzinerchic? Is it valid Andres_r and Ipstenu?
Comments welcome
